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FAKE NEWS AIN’T NOTHIN’ NEW (Found in the Connection: Rattling Loose End #105)

One can still hear people as informed and intelligent as Little Steven Van Zandt opine that the Beatles invented the rock band, because, in addition to writing most of their own songs, they played their instruments in the studio while certain other bands (well, one particular band) only sang over tracks laid down by super-skilled session musicians. So many people have said something similar over the years I had almost taken to believing it myself. Propaganda works on you that way**

Despite what many rock historians and writers have suggested over the years, the instrumental track for this enduring classic features just the Beach Boys themselves: Brian on piano, Al on bass, Carl on guitar and Dennis on drums. Like many songs from this period, the background vocals were recorded and doubled first before Brian sang the lead…

The “enduring classic” was only this…which, once you’ve heard it a thousand times, only emerges as one of the greatest (and subtlest) instrumental tracks on any rock and roll record…on top of all the other things that made you listen a thousand times to begin with:

Somewhere in that piece they suggest (or is it assert?) that “Don’t Worry Baby” was conceived as an answer record to “Be My Baby”

Now that I think of it, this sounds true spiritually, even if it’s debatable as literal fact.

And it makes both records larger….which I admit I didn’t think was humanly possible.

**Wonder if Dave Marsh still thinks (as he asserted in The Heart of Rock ‘n’ Soul) that Tommy Tedesco played the guitar on “Surfin’ U.S.A.”?

4 thoughts on “FAKE NEWS AIN’T NOTHIN’ NEW (Found in the Connection: Rattling Loose End #105)”

Um, I’m taking you at your word here and doing no research on this one—but if Mr Van Zandt believes that the Beatles invented the rock band, he’s neither well-informed nor particularly intelligent on the facts of the field of his own artistic endeavor.

Hell’s Belles, everyone knows the Beatles were a pop group and that the modern rock band was invented by Led Zeppelin in 1968.